


No Dreamer

by Anthropos_Metron



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Crossover, Angst, Canon Scene Descriptions, Canon Scene Variations, Canon character deaths, Clack, Doubt, Drug Abuse, Duty, Eyes on Me, Family, Guilt, Heartbreak, Infatuation, Insecurity, Integrity, Leg Cramps, Multi, Self-Repression, True Love, bereavement
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-03-01 15:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18802975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anthropos_Metron/pseuds/Anthropos_Metron
Summary: A Galbadian soldier dreams of honour, and being a hero. Unfortunately, fate sometimes has a way of giving us exactly what we want.Canon Crossover with a twist. I’ve listed this as Multi, because the Raine relationship is certainly still there, and I’ve tried to do justice to it, but thematically it’s really a Clack piece.On permanent pause, unless someone actively says they want this continued in the comments.





	1. Eyes On Me

**Author's Note:**

> Though by the very nature of this fic I’ve reproduced some of the game scenes of FFVIII, I’ve wrote them with my own spin on them. I’ve avoided direct use of lines from the game as much as possible, though one or two iconic ones had to be included. Those are obviously from the game, though, they’re not mine. Same goes for the broad character arc too, though I’ve modified it quite heavily in places.
> 
> Additional standard disclaimers apply, these aren't my characters, I'm not making an IP claim, and this isn't being done for commercial purposes. I'm just playing around with the characters because I love the FF games and writing.
> 
> Hope people enjoy.

They’d found the bar quite by chance.

He wasn’t really much of a drinker, but they were already well advanced along a gamely progress of bars when they passed the main entrance of the Galbadia, a big, old-fashioned, city centre hotel; the sort of concrete landmark which everyone has passed, everyone orientates themselves around, yet nobody can ever quite recall going into. Then Ward, the big loveable pain in the ass, had interrupted the conversation he was having with them about his heroic dreams, and said to him, his thumb jabbing towards the Galbadia’s entrance, _Hey, Zack, does this place have a bar? I bet they could use some heroic amounts of money._

 _Ohh-kayy_ , he said, with a sigh. _Anything to keep ya happy._

It did have a bar. Well, a bar-stroke-crypt. From the lobby, you had to descend stairs into a subterranean vault which, if anything, made the exterior of the hotel look contemporary. Old-style wood panelling on the walls, exhausted semi-circular sofa booths, and a raised stage on which an almost absurdly huge piano stood. It didn’t remotely surprise him, once he’d made his way to the bottom of the stairs that the carpet stuck to the soles of his boots with each step.

_Oh man._

The three of them had sat in the corner, and a waitress had come over to take their order – quaintly old-fashioned – and they’d begun their awed whispering about what a dump this place was.

And then they’d returned to their conversation about his dreams, and he’d told them all about them, and then Kiros had very, very audibly sighed for whole seconds, and then he’d done a fist-pump about how awesome it was going to be.

And in lowering his arm, he’d looked up, and noticed that someone was taking a seat at the piano.

It was the suit he first noticed. Black trousers and jacket, white shirt and a black bow-tie. As antediluvian as the rest of the place. Did they make him wear that?

He had spiky blonde hair, which framed a sweet face which always seemed to wear a pained expression. He wondered why.

He couldn’t stop looking. And he doesn’t.

Kiros brings a forefinger underneath his chin, and gently raises it to shut his friend’s mouth.

_Rather distracted, aren’t we?_

He’s embarrassed. Flustered. Denies everything.

_I-uh-I wasn’t -uh_

_Yop,_ Ward says. _And President Delling’s my grandma._

He’s too lost in the playing to argue. He has no judgement when it comes to music, but the sound sings to him. And with every passing second he hopes that the pianist doesn’t stumble over any of the keys. And he doesn’t. It’s all wonderfully fluent.

They agree to move onto somewhere else. And he’s happy to do so, he tells himself, because this is becoming silly. But his desire is in riot. It wants to stay, and listen.

He stands at the bottom of the stairs. And yes, the pianist looks just as good from this angle. And he’s only a few feet away. And he could move forward, command his legs to climb the stage, and tell him how much he enjoyed his playing.

But he can’t.

And oh man, his leg is cramping up. He shuffles up the stairs in a zombie-like retreat.

***

He thinks about the pianist all the next day, though he tries to push it all away, out of him. He doesn’t like men. Not like that. He just… doesn’t.

He rationalises it by completely stressing the playing. The performance. That is what it’s all about. He enjoys the playing so much. And he does, but a rebel aspect of him wants to talk to the player too. To say hello, to just hear him speak.

By the end of the day after the next, he knows he has to go back. It’s an impulse he can’t shirk or defeat.

He makes his way back to the hotel, on his own. He strolls down the stairs, and he’s there, on the piano.

He’d like to know his name. He asks the girl behind the bar about him, the pianist. _Oh, that’s Cloud._

Cloud.

He takes his drink over to the corner, and sits, listening, his elbows on his knees, and his head resting in his hands.

At one point, Cloud shifts his gaze on the keys, and Zack thinks he sees his eyes brush him for a minute.

But even if so, this has no meaning. He’s a ladies' man, everyone knows that.

But if he wasn’t, he doesn’t know anything about music, and he can’t play the piano. He doesn’t know a single note, and he would never have the confidence to ever perform on a stage. He wasn’t even sure he _owned_ a suit.

And he certainly doesn’t think he looks like a million gill.

All he knows is how to fire a weapon. Granted, he likes to write, but his actual speech is crude, he knows that. As Kiros and Ward were constantly reminding him, he barely even knows how to drive. He was only good at soldiering, just a nondescript guy with a roughly-hewn accent, from Delling City’s north side. A purebred nobody.

If all that was a consideration, which it _isn’t._

He stays, listening, for another half an hour, until his mood falls so low the thing he _must_ do is get up, and leave. He’s in one of those irritable moods where he can’t even discern to himself why he feels so low, which exacerbates it.

His leave is up in two days. Back to war, back to Timber. At least then he can put this behind him. He’s not a teenager anymore. This has just been an embarrassment. Or so he argues to himself, strongly.

He’d forget all about it, far away from here, in Timber.

***

He doesn’t.

Every time they talk, in the bunkhouse, or at chop, the other men talk about girls. Sweethearts they are chastely dedicated to, with occasional letters, or boastful tales of conquests with local girls.

All he thinks about is Cloud, and his music. He can’t pretend anymore. Doesn’t want to.

He thinks about Cloud. It’s what he does. At night, when he can’t sleep, constantly shifting his body in his bunk, the back of his arm over his eyes. When he’s standing in line in the pre-dawn cold for hours, waiting for the armoury to open. When he’s doing push-ups, when he’s doing squats, when he’s on patrol, when he’s breathing. When he’s living.

It itches and burns all over his body, all over his mind, inside and out. There is no escape. At night, he muffles his tears into his pillow.

Dreams of being a hero seem to suddenly not have the currency they used to have.

The only dreams he has now are about Cloud.

***

When his next leave comes up, they all make their way back to the bar in the hotel. Because that’s the only thing he can do. He has to see if Cloud is still there.

Yes, Cloud is still there. Cloud is still _beautiful_ , and his playing is still sublime.

And he can’t do anything. Sometimes, he walks to the bar, and when he begins his walk, his firm intention is to talk to Cloud, to introduce himself, to veer to the right. But his legs never obey.

He drinks an awful lot of fruit juice.

***

He’s never had any trouble at all talking to women. But why should he even make that comparison, he asks himself? Because Cloud is a man, so it should be different, shouldn’t it? And a part of him doesn’t want it to be different, and another part of him doesn’t think he should be different at all, and another part of him –

He doesn’t understand any of it.

***

After a few nights’ visits to the bar, something happens that pushes even further into the vortex of thoughts and feelings that spirals inside him.

Cloud’s time on the piano ends, and it seems prematurely. He worries about what it means, until someone sets up a microphone on the stage. And then the realisation slowly forms.

It means Cloud is going to sing.

It’s the first time he’s ever heard Cloud speak. And his voice is just as soft as he’d thought it would be. Just as perfect, just as captivating.

He blushes, and lowers his head.

Cloud’s singing is a delight. He sings old Galbadian favourites, some cheesy songs popular with the public, but which Zack’s never favoured. But he drinks it all in. Every song.

He asks Kiros, who knows much more about these things than he, that Cloud can really sing, can’t he? He can really play the piano?

Kiros says yes, he can really sing, and he can really play.

So why isn’t Cloud famous? Why isn’t he selling records? Why is he playing in a hotel bar with a sticky carpet?

Kiros raises that mild, world-weary smile, indulging his friend, but at the same time, hopelessly full of affection for him.

_Well. Life isn’t always that simple._

He couldn’t argue with that. Though he certainly wished it was.

***

Cloud’s voice, his singing, fills his mind.

He knows this is beyond obsession. It’s stupid. And a part of him still thinks it’s _wrong_. But that doesn’t mean the tears he sheds at night are any less real. It can’t ever change how he feels.

The bar is becoming quite popular with soldiers on leave now. It’s becoming much more crowded than it used to be. The tale of his visits to the bar has seeped out and oh man, he’s taken so many jibes for it, but he doesn’t really care anymore about that.

He thinks he sees Cloud’s eyes pass over him, and he thinks he might notice the most tentative beginning of a smile sometimes. But that’s probably his imagination.

Kiros and Ward sometimes jab him with their elbows, and encourage him to go up and speak to Cloud, because they’re sure Cloud likes him too, and knows he likes him.

How would they know? And, uh, he doesn’t, anyway…

And in any case, there’s a world, a _universe_ , a city-sized canyon of distance between them knowing, between him knowing, between everyone knowing, and saying _hello_. It’s such a huge break with everything he’s ever done before. And he can’t-

So he just watches Cloud sing and play. Sometimes, it feels like Cloud has arranged his songs based on Zack’s preferences, but that’s also probably his imagination. He can’t know. Can’t possibly know.

He loves it most when Cloud sings. He loves the fractional little sway he does when singing. And the movement of his arms, and the way he holds the microphone stand. It’s all so gentle, so tentative.

When Cloud is singing, he sits, his head cupped in his hands, and his face moves involuntarily in response to the music. Little rises of his eyebrows when Cloud hits a certain note, or comes to a certain part of the song. His mouth miming to lyrics, or his face making strange expressions. He isn’t even conscious he’s doing it.

Ward calls it his ‘dreaming puppy’ face.

_Yeah, yeah. Lap it up guys. I don’t care._

***

He’s aware that Kiros and Ward have talked to the bar staff, and the bar staff have talked to the patrons; and that consequently Cloud and him have an audience now. That he is an entertainment of sorts. He’s acutely aware of the times when two patrons sit at the bar, and start elbowing each other in the sides, and turning around to furtively look at him, grinning.

He wants to rise up, and cry out at how foolish they are, for disdaining Cloud in favour of this crass little amusement. How the whole fact of him becoming a spectacle makes a mockery of everything he feels. Of how it heaps pressure and pressure on him, to introduce himself, to not introduce himself. To do something.

But he doesn’t.

He knows this is the night. This is the night he introduces himself. This is it. The big one.

He drinks an awful lot of fruit juice.

When it comes time to leave, the time when he has to make a decision, he stands at the foot of the stairs, preparing to talk to Cloud. His hands are trembling, and his leg is beginning to cramp. He’s aware that he’s quite literally swallowing down his doubts.

And he feels the mutiny of his body and his mind drifting away from what he wants, and into what’s safe. Parts of him are already readying themselves to climb the stairs. That’s firmly his next task in life, for them.

And he’s climbing the stairs, back up into the light of the lobby. Every step the passing of a waypost of resignation, of pain, of parting. Of failure.

Maybe next time.

***

Back to the front, back to Timber.

It’s not as bad, this time. Maybe he’s over it.

Yet when his next leave approaches, it all floods back. The sensations, the feelings, the giddiness, the slow rise of nervous excitement as the day approaches. Like a kid waiting for the holidays.

He drives them back to Delling City at a hellish pace. Kiros and Ward are all-too vocal in offering sarcastic advice and commentary. They actually get into an argument and nearly crash into a ditch on a bend. At one point, they get lost, though he doesn’t tell them, and he gets out to find where they are, and then they become _really_ lost. But they finally make it back to the vehicle.

When they approach the city, his emotions bubble, and then boil, and then go into meltdown. It’s too much, and he ditches the vehicle in the middle of a road. He has to get out, for air. And running there curiously feels like it has more immediacy than driving.

_Guys, it’s cool, okay?_

He runs to the hotel, to the bar, and he can feel the soaring delight in his chest again. _Oh man, oh man, I’m nearly back. He has to still be here, please please please plllllleeeassssee._

He runs down the stairs, and the waitress is right there, and Cloud isn’t, and he blurts out an incomprehensible blabber of panic to her, and –

 _He’s here, don’t worry_ , she says, giggling. _Your usual table is ready._

He beams a blushing grin, doubtless looking dangerously unbalanced, and he can’t sit still when they reach their table. He tries to prepare himself, tries to lift his courage with talk of drinking. And he tells _them_ to be at ease.

This has to be the night. No more prevaricating. No more failures. No more being a wuss. No more worrying about what people might think.

Kiros and Ward spur him on, encouraging him openly. He’s embarrassed, again. _Gimme a break, guys._

Cloud appears, and takes his place at the piano.

He’s looking at the floor, internally arguing himself into action.

Deep breath. Another. Okay. This is it.

He shuts out his mind, smothering it, and just walks. And then before he knows it, he’s standing at the top of the stairs to the stage. Right there. And Cloud is looking at him, from behind the piano. Looking right at him, a few feet away. Smiling.

Is he smiling as well? He doesn’t know. He’s standing outside himself. He’s shut his mind off. Yanked out the plug.

Maybe I should tal –

_Arrgggggggghhhh!_

The pressure in his thigh is building, and it’s cramping, and oh man oh man it’s really _really_ bad, and he tries to rub it back into normalcy, and he can’t bear this embarrassment, so he limps down off the stage. But some wild impulse in him seizes back the controls, and he staggers back up onto the stage, and then, no, he’s coming back down off them. He’s done one big circle, like a ship that’s lost its rudder.

He limps back over to their table.

They’re kind of impressed that he actually managed what he did, though their faces are full of pity for his execution, all the same. _I think you cut about a minus three on the manliness scale_ , Kiros notes.

But he’s not really bothered. All he can think about is Cloud smiling at him. It’s an advance. It’s a step forward. He’s happy, and a little proud of himself.

They’re both going, Kiros and Ward announce.

He jumps up. _Ward, man, come back, we aint going anywhere, we’ve just arrived! What the-?_

 _Enjoy it, Zack_ , Kiros tells him.

What _are_ they talking about?

“Can I have a seat?”

It’s a voice, right behind him. Soft, but deep, a pleasant, warm voice, and he’s sure he’s heard it before, it’s familiar-

He turns around, and _he’s_ standing right there, right in front of him, and he cries out in horror and instinctively jogs to the other end of the booth’s semicircle. He didn’t mean to, but he’s – it’s – it’s!

It’s Cloud!

He’s breathing in quick, desperate breaths, because it’s Cloud, and he’s taken a seat at the other end of the booth, and Cloud’s smiling at him, a gentle, encompassing smile which is perfect for putting someone at their ease, but.. but… it’s Cloud!

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Cloud says.

“Nn-nn-nn-no. It’s c-c-c-“

“Cool,” Cloud finishes, with a giggle.

He’s stuttering. He doesn’t even have a stutter! But there’s so much physical tension in his body, his mouth is quivering, and he can’t enunciate his words properly.

He’s still standing up.

“Take a seat,” Cloud purrs, patting the seating of the booth. He’s still giggling.

He does exactly that, because it’s Cloud. But he just looks at the floor between his legs, because it’s Cloud.

“Is your leg better?”

“O-hoo-h, y-yeah. It j-just cramps uh-up when I get nervous.”

“You really don’t need to be nervous around me,” Cloud says, and that lovely, warm smile rises again.

How is it that every word he says is so gentle, so tender? That everything he’s done has been designed to make him relax? How can someone be so perfectly empathetic that he, Zack, is almost touching the edges of being mellow, even though he’s talking with _Cloud?_

Probably because it’s Cloud.

“Would you like to talk somewhere private? I have a room here.”

“YOUR R-HOOO-HOO?” he bellows involuntarily. This is far, far too much for him to take in in all of two minutes.

“Well – the only reason I mention it is because it’s hard to talk freely. Everyone in the room is listening.”

He looks up a little and realises they have an audience of no less than twelve people, including Kiros and Ward, all of whom aren’t being remotely discrete about the fact that they’re eavesdropping.

He tenses up. He can actually sense his heart surging in his chest, alarmingly.

“You don’t want to? I’ve really been meaning to talk with you for a while.”

He’s let a lot of things slide, but he’s not going to let this slide. Apart from anything else, their audience would probably kill him.

“’Course I do!”

“Great. Well, I’ll see you soon. Ask at reception for my room.”

Cloud warms him with another of those sigh-inducing smiles, and then gets up, making for the direction of the lobby.

He just sits, staring, trying to process what has happened, and what might happen when he and Cloud talk, and what the destination of it all is. It feels overwhelming, and it makes him feel light-headed. It feels like he’s not in his own body anymore, as if he’s transformed somehow.

He wonders if he’s dreaming.

***

He finally grasps the handle, and opens the door.

It took him a while, as he had to make three journeys to the counter at reception, but he eventually managed something approximating human speech regarding Mr Cloud wanting to see him in his room.

It’s not what he thought it would be.

It’s quite a spacious room. Two single beds, and a table with two chairs at the far end, overlooking a window. A chest, with a vase on it, filled with roses. Roses, all of different colours.

Cloud’s sitting at the end of one of the beds, and he’s taken his suit jacket off, and he looks even better in just the white of the shirt and the bow-tie, and he wonders if Cloud will ever stop looking better and better to him. Probably not.

Cloud thanks him for coming.

“Hey, n-no problem!”

Cloud invites him to take a seat.

He tries sitting on the other bed to the one Cloud is on, but that just sets his mind screaming. So he gets up, and tries one of the chairs by the window, but that feels too distant.

Cloud just giggles. It only occurs to him now that this might be because Cloud is nervous too, but that seems too wild a notion to countenance.

He realises that there isn’t anywhere he can sit where his mind isn’t racing, or where he feels like he’s deliberately keeping his distance from Cloud. No middle ground, it’s one or the other.

Maybe this was a mistake. He gets up to – to leave? To breathe in the roses, strangely hoping that might calm him?

“Are you going?” Cloud’s voice is heavy with disappointment.

There’s a burst of thought inside his mind, a thought which is angry with him, telling him not to ruin this, to make Cloud unhappy, just because he’s uncomfortable. Don’t be selfish. Don’t be an ass.

He’s just honest.

“S-sorry. But I’m a huge fan of yours. So being in this situation is kinda scary for me…”

Cloud grins; not a mocking grin, but a happy, bashful one.

“That must be why you’re in the bar so often.”

“I- you-saw me? I didn’t – b-but, yeah….”

“I always notice when you’re smiling,” Cloud volunteers. “You have lovely eyes,” he comments, his voice low.

He seizes up, He just-ca-

“Seems like they’re a bit scared, now, though. Would they be more scared if they knew I just wanted to talk, looking into them?”

Yes, yes, they would be.

There’s a silence for a time. Gradually, though, his mind becomes a touch more reconciled to the situation. There seemed to be a mutual, unspoken understanding developing; Cloud knew he was scared, and didn’t mind. And that alone made him much less fearful.

Cloud pours them some red wine, and in the clink of their glasses meeting, he realises that he’s somewhere approaching relaxed.

Yes, he must be dreaming.

***

Once he’d passed the threshold of being comfortable, it seemed he couldn’t stop talking.

He talked to Cloud about how he’d been drafted into the military to fight in the war, and how he’d began wanting to embrace it, to be a big hero. But that he’d seen a lot of things in the war he didn’t like, and he didn’t want to be a hero anymore. He still kinda liked the travel of the military, and Kiros and Ward being with him, but that was it. Though he still had dreams, they weren’t about being a hero anymore; they were just… simple dreams.

And he finally realises he’s been talking far too much. Practically monologues.

He apologises, and asks Cloud about his dreams.

Cloud tells him he wants to sing, but with original compositions, not just covering old pop songs in a bar. But he’d struggled to write anything. And he’d realised he’d been trying to write mechanically, trying to write _just_ to write, to fill space, but that he could only really write when he had something to say.

And thanks to him, he felt he could now.

_Thanks to me?_

“Yeah. Whenever I’ve seen you sitting in the corner, with all the expressions you’ve had on your face. The whole range of feelings, of emotions…” Cloud’s voice tails off, and this time it’s his turn to look at the floor.

His mouth hangs open, as a blush spreads over his face. “Wow, I really must be dreaming,” he blurts out.

Cloud lifts his head, and a grin, full of fun, spreads across his face. He reaches up to pinch Zack’s cheek.

“Hey! What- what –“

“Just wanted to make sure you weren’t dreaming,” Cloud says.

He’s charmed. His quizzical frown melts into a smile mirroring Cloud’s. They laugh in concert, all tension melting away.

As the laugh settles, their eyes meet, and stay locked. He’s never realised how vibrant, how full of colour Cloud’s eyes are before. And he loves this feeling, like no other feeling he’s ever felt.

What even is it he feels? He’s never defined it, never quantified it, never been able to tie the gap between the reality of emotion and a definition. It just… is.

And he’s okay with that, now. It just is.

There’s a knock on the door to the room, startling them out of the shared moment, and Kiros is shouting that they have to assemble soon outside the presidential palace. New orders.

He hadn’t realised it, but they’ve talked for hours and hours.

As they both rise to their feet, there’s a palpable disappointment, shared between the two of them, but also a familiarity, now. An easiness.

“Can we meet again?” Cloud asks.

“Of course! I wanna hear your new songs!”

Cloud grins, and quite suddenly wraps one of his arms around Zack, and draws himself close, his other hand resting on Zack’s chest, on the left side.

He’s not as paralysed by this development as he would have been just a few hours ago. It’s a sensation beyond sensations, of course. He never wants to move. The connection between Cloud’s palm and his chest makes something intangible flare inside him in both shock and elation.

He looks into Cloud’s eyes. He’s at peace, completely happy with life, and the small things in it.

Cloud whispers how much he loves his eyes looking at him.

Smiling, he brings his hands up in response, shaking a little, and draws them over Cloud’s shoulders, back and forth. Then he leans in, and plants his lips on the shorter man’s forehead, resting the kiss there for a few seconds, before withdrawing, slowly.

He sighs. The inevitable has to be broached, at some point.

“I have to go.”

“I know. It’s okay. Just come back to see me, okay?”

“I promise.”

They disengage, and slowly pull away from each other, but no part of him wants this, and his hand trails along Cloud’s arm. As his hand finally brushes Cloud’s, Cloud takes it, and squeezes it tight for a moment.

They stare into each other’s eyes again, and he sighs, again.

“See you soon,” Cloud says, releasing him from his obligation to stay.

He backs up out of the room, carefully reversing, not wanting to stop looking at Cloud, and finally manoeuvres himself into the doorway. Before he closes the door, he flashes Cloud the widest, broadest, most ecstatic grin he can, and Cloud reciprocates.

He doesn’t stop grinning until they’re ordered to stand to attention, eyes front, outside the presidential palace. He establishes his composure and a neutral expression only with an immense struggle.

Being in paradise felt good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was undecided about the singing in the bar. Eyes on Me makes it sound like Julia was singing at some points, though from the lyrics I can potentially interpret it as metaphorical singing, or Julia practising singing with the bar completely empty. In the game, Julia makes it pretty clear in her room that she hasn’t been singing, but that’s because she can’t compose original songs. 
> 
> So I decided to come down half-way between Eyes on Me and the game, and have Cloud gradually sing a little as Zack visits more, but not original songs he’s composed, just covers. I just thought it worked given the themes I was playing with here: I claim dramatic license. Hey, it’s an AU. If I’d been writing Laguna-Julia I think I would have stuck to just piano playing. Which may be part of why I didn’t do a simple Laguna-Julia fic.
> 
> Thanks to anyone who leaves kudos or comments!


	2. There, In The Corner

They’re shipped out far away, to Centra. He remembers the sunsets most of all; garish, threatening strips of orange which bleed into dusk.

After several weeks, they’re inserted into an area for a reconnaissance on the edges of a site the Estharians are excavating, but they’re snagged by an enemy patrol. They’re pushed out, and then cornered, at the top of a cliff, overlooking the sea. They’ve got nowhere to run to.

The Estharians keep rushing them in waves. They just about manage to hold them off for a time, but are horribly wounded.

Ward, wheezing through blood, suddenly tells him and Kiros that it’s been fun.

Lost in shock, he tries to laugh off the situation. It’s easy to hoist a denial; nothing bad is going to happen, because his heart is full. He does believe life has happy endings. So Ward’s going to be fine.

They can’t go forward. But there’s a boat down there. He eases Kiros and Ward’s bodies over the precipice, but there’s whole seconds before the splashes.

He takes a breath, fear invading his body through the soles of his feat, and tries to lower himself down over the edge, but loses his footing on the loose rockface.

Thoughts of Cloud emerge immediately as his back chills against the cool air, together with an icy spike of anticipation of the slap of forcible impact with the sea.

Or rocks, perhaps.

There’s a violent lash across his shoulders, and then the gurgle of water in his ears.

Images flash across his mind of Cloud, in black, attending his funeral.

***

He hauls them onto the boat, and takes it out to sea, heading north, back to Galbadia.

As sundown approaches, he sees land on the horizon. Just have to make it to the coast, and then he’s out of it. Maybe a discharge, but he doesn’t care if he has to desert. Doing time for a few years would be worth it, if it means settling down with Cloud at the end of it. Just get straight back to Delling City.

He hurts all over his body, and he’s not sure how, or why, he’s injured. He doesn’t want to know. Fractures, maybe.

Just have to make it to the coast. It’s close, now.

And then, suddenly, they’re being strafed by an Estharian plane. Oh shit.

The boat is saturated with rounds.

No time for a liferaft, and in any case, it’d just be a target. He knows they have to get into the sea before the pilot finishes them off. Hopefully he’ll just leave them to die in the water.

The water is freezing, but none of them die of shock, and he thinks they can make it before hypothermia makes them irretrievable.

They start swimming, together, but after only seconds there’s no hope of keeping track of each other.

He doesn’t remember much after that.

He remembers being on his back, and feeling deathly cold and wet, looking at a sky breaking out into purple and persimmon. There’s the gentle rustle of what sounds like it might be a tide. But he can’t move. And it’ll be night, soon.

He’s going to die.

***

He’s in a bed, in a room which has a stuffy, sweet-smelling warmth to it.

It’s a woozy, heavy sort of semi-consciousness which he battles against. He has the intuitive feeling that he’s pulling out from an induced sleep. He tries to muster his thoughts, trying to recall who he is, and what he’s doing here, and why. He has only a few answers.

He tries to move his body. Nope.

His mind settles a little, and he remembers being dragged into a building, with lots of tables, and lots of people talking, and he’s crying out, and then screaming.

He tries to speak, but his throat is painfully dehydrated. Eventually he produces some unearthly noise.

A woman appears in the doorway of the room, looking startled as she grips the doorframe.

She quickly moves towards him, and swiftly pulls up a chair to sit beside the bed.

“You’ve been rather badly injured,” she notes conversationally, as she places her hand on his forehead, “but I think you’re going to be okay. Would you like some water?”

He nods. She fetches some, and she slips her hand under his head, lifting it off the pillow as his lips connect with the glass.

“You’re probably wondering where you are, I suppose? Well, you’re in Winhill, but I guess you’ve probably never heard of it. Small town. Village, really.”

He doesn’t know whether to be pleased or a little fearful that he seems to have been entrusted to the care of someone so businesslike.

“I’m afraid between Estharian raids round here, the fact that we’re practically in the middle of nowhere, and the draft, healthcare’s a little hard to come by these days. So it seems you’re going to have to tolerate my ministrations. Hope I don’t kill you,” she adds in a jokey tone, her eyebrows rising as she momentarily meets his eyes.

Me too, he thinks.

“Oh, I’m forgetting myself, I’m Raine. I already know who you are, it was on your uniform and dog tags. You were found on the beach by one of the locals, and _obviously_ because my mother was a doctor, I’m the font of all medical knowledge round here at the moment.”

He was warming to her, a little.

“Well,” she says, patting her knees, “I’ll leave you to rest for the moment. I’m afraid you have quite a lot of bedrest ahead of you. But if you need anything, just say. Okay?”

He smiles an acknowledgement.

***

Raine comes back to check on him regularly. Sometimes, she can be quite brusque. But she’s also surprisingly emotionally intuitive and direct, and doesn’t think twice about gently patting his shoulder or holding his hand when his mood is low, or he’s in pain.

He learns that in addition to caring for him, she runs the village pub, and is taking care of a little girl, a war orphan. It’s all probably a huge burden to her, but she doesn’t complain.

He asks her about Kiros and Ward. Nothing, she says. You were found alone. Probably drowned, he supposes.

The guilt comes flooding over him. He should have died. The images of Cloud attending his funeral, they should have been a premonition. He’s too exhausted to cry, but his eyes sting.

***

Days pass by without variation, just one long flat landscape. He’s too sore, and too tired, to weep, or be bored. He just lets his mind drift, looking at the ceiling, or he sleeps.

He thinks of Cloud.

Sometimes he wonders if he should mention him to Raine. But there’s too much distance between him being bedridden, and the bar of the hotel. He can’t find the words to bridge the two contexts. He’s too guilty over the deaths of Kiros and Ward. He’s embarrassed about being an invalid.

Raine says she’s tried to notify the army, and he’s probably going to be granted a medical discharge. Going to be a few months before that happens though, she supposes. Things move slowly because of the war.

He can’t be happy, not now. But at least he’ll get his life back

***

After about a week, he has a visitor.

She wanders in with Raine, hugging her legs, looking at him tentatively from behind them. She has the small child’s natural caution around strangers.

After a few days, she starts peeking at him from the side of the bed. He’s a novelty to her.

Eventually, her curiosity wins out, and she starts volunteering information. _I’m Ellone. What’s your name?_

She quickly becomes quite confident, and talkative. He makes jokes with her, and encourages her boisterousness, despite the disapproving glares of Raine.

Whenever Ellone is there, he doesn’t think of Ward and Kiros, or Cloud. All the hurt seems to become secondary, existing at the margins.

One night, when Ellone has gone to bed, Raine tells him about how Ellone’s parents were murdered in their own home by the Estharians, for trying to protect her.

It puts his situation in some perspective.

He’s feeling a tiny bit closer to normal now, and he asks Ellone if she likes stories. She does, and she brings books for him to read to her. Her screaming laughter when he voices characters has him laughing too, despite himself.

***

Raine starts to squeeze his hand more and more, and eventually their hands linger together, him gently rubbing his fingers over her knuckles. Her hands are very different to Cloud’s; smaller, feminine, but also rougher. Certainly not a pianist’s hands. It’s hard to pretend otherwise.

When they smile at each other, they both can’t resist giving into muted laughter, and it seems that neither of them quite understand why.

He can’t deny it feels good when Raine slowly draws her head closer, tentatively, and they kiss. After the regime of medication his whole body has felt dry for weeks and weeks, and her lips are impossibly wet and warm.

He hates himself afterwards, of course. It never happens again. Curiously, Raine makes no attempt to make it otherwise.

***

After about three months, he starts to hobble out of bed, though only for short periods, when Raine is doing chores. He has to be vertical, he has to move. He’s losing his mind; it feels like the bed is becoming his tomb.

He looks at a map of the region on a wall in the pub. If anything, Raine has been generous in her sarcastic commentary on Winhill’s location. It redefines remoteness. It’s a pimple on the ass of Nowhere.

But even more important than moving is getting to a phone, and trying to reach Cloud.

He shuffles around in the back room, and finds a phone. He gets a little excited. He picks up the receiver.

He gets a dialing tone, but when he tries to phone a Delling City number, it can’t be connected. _Of course_.

He sighs at the inconvenience, until he grasps the potential implications, and then he starts to panic. He has to find Raine. He calls out for her.

She appears, with a strangely guarded expression, not the volley of chastisement for walking around he’d expected. “Phoning someone?”

“Yeah. I, I need to phone the capital-“

“No can do, I’m afraid. All the Estharian raids between here and the other end of the continent – well, just the war, isn’t it?”

He’s heard that a lot from civilians, the phlegmatic resignation about the war. Momentarily he loses his temper. “Why did I have to be-“ He doesn’t finish the thought. He might have died without Raine.

She just stands, silently, as he limps back upstairs, defeated.

He punches the doorframe when he gets to his room. It hurts, but still feels good. He hated the war before all of this. The killing, the massacres in Timber he knew went on.

Now his hatred of it is white hot.

***

Two guys in uniform on a motorbike arrive one day, and grill him and the locals about what happened and what his injuries are. They’re pretty pissed, the country needs all the manpower it can, but they think they’ll discharge him. Discharge him or arrest him, one of them says, with a laugh.

He’s not entirely sure his body will ever be the same, but in so far as it can heal, it’s on the road. Just another month or two, and then back to Delling City.

The old anticipation is back, in force. There’s no struggle inside him this time. He’s quite clear-headed. All he needs are simple confirmations, from Cloud.

He’s almost happy. He can’t fully forgive himself for Kiros and Ward, but as his mobility recovers, his spirit starts to rise. Life seems decent again. With no medication polluting him, he can appreciate food, even if it is tempered by Raine’s increasing irritation that Ellone is doing fist-pumps now.

***

Shouting.

It’s a man’s shouting, desperate, but limp, a little timid, strangely restrained.

An older person’s shouts - shouts of fear. He’s moving, instinctively, as gamely as is safe for him.

It’s a huge catcherpillar, fat and noxious-smelling. Easy enough to despatch for him, but not for those left in Winhill. The man is bloodied, but alive. Tells him of how they’re overrunning the village.

There’s few of the able-bodied left. The men off to fight, many of the women channelled off into war work.

The realisation starts to filter into his mind, as he helps the man up, and off to Raine.

Raine tells him he doesn’t have to; he should make his way home soon.

It’s a nice gesture, but not remotely realistic. He can’t leave, after all she’s done. He can’t set off on the road, every night wondering about the possibility of a tiny casket being lowered into the ground back in Winhill. He just can’t.

He starts thinking of ways to square the circle, some bizarre. A banquet of monster-slaying over a few days, a gamble of keeping the population down just enough. Or of taking Ellone with him. Cloud and Ellone and him together is a happy-making thought. He’s sure Ellone would love Cloud. But he can’t possibly drag Ellone away from her home, or force that journey on her. Mad schemes percolate in his brain; of leading the entire village off to Delling City, as a troupe. Ludicrous thoughts.

Just stay for the winter, Raine says. It’s not the time for travelling, anyhow. A decent attempt to reassure that his presence is only temporary, that his debt is not forever, but he knows the monsters will only be more numerous in the Spring.

Sometimes, he makes his way to the beach, and wants to wade in, and swim all the way back to Delling.

***

He writes a letter, but it’s despatched with no assurance of it making its destination. After that he simply tries to lock away thoughts of Cloud. It’s been nearly nine months, but people don’t change how they feel in so short a time, he tells himself. He hasn’t. There’s a war on. Cloud would understand. There’s stories of couples being separated for years in wartime, aren’t there?

But they never really were a couple. Just the incipient prospect of becoming one.

He focuses on things he has control over, like his fitness. He can walk upright, and he feels human again.

The monsters don’t know what’s hit them.

It’s good he’s not still imprisoned in bed when the winter finally comes in force, with early darkness in the evening, and unvarying cold.

He becomes cognisant that the tears at night-time have returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FWIW, I'm probably going to abandon this, unless there's someone who really, really wants me to complete. This was mostly a way to build on the rather experimental Eight fics and ease myself into writing, but if someone is really invested, I'll give capping it off a shot.


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